[caption id="attachment_45031" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="A screen shot from the ad (captured from Gawker)"][/caption]

One of the cutest things about this week's episode of Mad Men was the subplot about Don and Harry trying to land the Rolling Stones for a Heinz beans commercial. The cool kids kept insisting that no one could get the Stones to shill beans. As though pop stars would never dream of selling out.

In 2012, that idea's about as quaint as an old Victrola. You may have noticed that almost every music video now has a mandatory shot of a product logo, since corporate sponsors are increasingly underwriting video budgets. And whenever a rapper or singer mentions a specific alcohol or car brand in a song, we should assume that a sponsorship check is being mailed to his or her bank.

And that's just how it is now. Being mad about it is like being mad that babies can't read. Today, the only time people get upset about musicians sponsoring products is when they get offended by the ads.

That's what happened this week with Mary J. Blige's new commercial for Burger King's chicken snack wraps. The spot, which is part of a larger campaign starring various celebrities, features Blige standing in a BK, singing a soulful ditty about the power of chicken wraps. Some people said it was racist for a black woman to be singing about fried chicken. The ad was pulled off the internet, with Burger King claiming music rights hadn't been cleared. (You can still see the commercial in this post at Gawker.) And then yesterday, Blige herself said that the ad wasn't what she was promised it would be and that her fans should know she would "never allow" a bad commercial to be released.

I call fowl foul on this whole controversy, from start to finish.

For one thing, as Slate noted, it's unfair to Blige to say the ad is racist. As the writer Aisha Harris notes, the ad is campy and satirical, and Blige is clearly presented as being in on the joke. I'm not saying that it's never going to be racist to see black people hawking fried chicken, but those things depend on context. To my eyes, in the context of this commercial, it's just dorky. I was much more offended by the way fried chicken was handled in The Help, where Octavia Spencer's Oscar-winning performance as a maid featured her saying, "Frying chicken just tend to make you feel better about life." To me, that's a scene that suggests a black woman should feel honored to be making fried chicken for white people because it somehow defines her identity. That's worse than Mary J Blige being moved to sing about a snack's tasty goodness.

But the reaction to the uproar has been just as dubious as the uproar itself. Does anyone think that the ad was pulled for "licensing issues" or that Blige, who was reportedly paid millions of dollars for the spot, didn't realize what was going on? The furious spin control is exhausting.

It's kind of heartening to see that a mass of angry consumers can still convince a major corporation to retract an ad, and it's never bad to have a conversation about race in America. But the operatic reactions to this commercial are making everyone seem phony. If we're angry about race in America, then let's consider whether Mary J. Blige should really be the target of our fury. If we're sorry we've offended our fans and customers, then let's consider giving them straight answers when we respond. Otherwise, we all risk losing our credibility about issues that demand it.

Mark Blankenship has written about pop music for NPR and the New York Times.